pable of it, or of any other form of devotion.
Notwithstanding her persistent banter, she had a most inviting innocence
of manner, almost an ingenuousness, that well became her exquisite
beauty. And but for a tentative daring in her talk, as if the gentle
creature were experimenting as to how far one could safely go, her
innocence might have seemed that of ignorance.

It came out in the talk that Mr. Lyon had been in Washington for a week,
and would return there later on.

"We had a claim on him," said Mrs. Eschelle, "for his kindness to us in
London, and we are trying to convince him that New York is the real
capital."

"Unfortunately," added Miss Eschelle, looking up in Mr. Lyon's face, "he
visited Brandon first, and you seem to have bewitched him with your
simple country ways. I can get him to talk of nothing else."

"You mean to say," Mr. Lyon replied, with the air of retorting, "that you
have asked me about nothing else."

"Oh, you know we felt a little responsible for you; and there is no place
so dangerous as the country. Now here you are protected--we put all the
wickedness on the stage, and learn to recognize and shun it."

"It may be wicked," said her mother, "but it is dull. Don't you find it
so, Mr. Henderson? I am passionately fond of Wagner, but it is too noisy
for anything tonight."

"I notice, dear," the dutiful daughter replied for all of us, "that you
have to raise your voice. But there is the ballet. Let us all listen
now."

Mr. Lyon excused himself from going with me, saying that he would call at
our hotel, and I took Henderson. "I shall count the minutes you are going
to lose," the girl said as we went out-to our box. The lobbies in the
interact were thronged with men--for the most part the young speculators
of the Chamber turned into loungers in the foyer--knowing, alert,
attitudinizing in the extreme of the mode, unable even in this hour to
give beauty the preference to business, well knowing, perhaps, that
beauty itself in these days has a fine eye for business.

I liked Henderson better in our box than in his own. Was it because the
atmosphere was more natural and genuine? Or was it Margaret's transparent
nature, her sincere enjoyment of the scene, her evident pleasure in the
music, the color, the gayety of the house, that made him drop the slight
cynical air of the world which had fitted him so admirably a moment
before? He already knew my wife and the Morgans, and, after the greeting